The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In this case, something unknown was called "scary" and thus "a threat" because they were idiots. This is lowest common denominator thinking at its finest. They want Sheeple who will obey even the most stupid of requests that have no basis for except for the security theater that we have.

And enough people WANT the security theater or worse, don't give a shit either way, that they hand over their lives to the very same idiots making such stupid decisions as this, and the poor lady that had her insulin confiscated because it violated the "liquid" ban policy.

These cases will continue until such time as we comply to their every rule. Ensuring we are the sheeple they want us to be. This is why more people out to cry out loudly and go to jail exposing these tyrants with badges every chance they get. If 10,000 people did this every day, they'd change the rules.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I just love it when people quote entire passages from our historical documents in some sort of futile effort to try and remind all of us of our "Rights", like they actually exist anymore.

Rights are inherent, and exist independently of any government. The Constitution does not grant rights; it doesn't even promise to protect them. It just says that the Federal government promises not to violate certain rights enumerated in the Constitution. Whether or not they've kept that promise is a different issue.

actually it's not a simple promise, it's the foundation of the Union I believe, as the States had to ratify that particular historic document in order to agree to the federation. So the only question remains: how much longer before it's dissolved, because the contract has been not just completely broken, but crowds of people walked all over it, took a dump on it and used parts of it as toilet paper.

The founding fathers did a job on you. There are no "inherent" or "natural" rights independent of any government. That's a bunch of philosophical rhetoric that they used to sell The Constitution. It looks great on paper but in the absence of government or society it's not even worth wiping your bum with it.

In the real world, in the absence of government, I could walk up to you and smash you in the head with a rock killing you and then take everything you have without consequence. There's your "inherent"

In the real world, in the absence of government, I could walk up to you and smash you in the head with a rock killing you and then take everything you have without consequence. There's your "inherent" rights.

That is only true in isolation; that is, only if you and your victim are the only people to witness. Otherwise, there will probably be consequences. Do that to someone in your same hypothetical absence of government in front of the victim's friends or family or other such group that we humans have evolved to form so readily, and I highly doubt that you would be walking away "without consequence".

So called "inherent rights" and "natural rights" are not necessarily, clear, discrete properties of an organism or a person or however you are defining us. Rather, they are more like emergent properties that will emerge naturally from being the gregarious social organism we have evolved to be. Rights appear because of the "social contract" of being such an organism.

And if you still think those rights are "inherent" then I suggest you take a trip to Somalia or Afghanistan or Syria or Bahrain.

And if you think in such a place a person can do anything like you suggested in your hypothetical example, you are also much mistaken. There will be consequences. Take away someone's "right to life" and unjustly kill them in front of anyone, friend or family or other, who thinks fondly of them for feels you are being unjust, and you may just find there are consequences to infringing on someone's so-called rights.

Rights are inherent, and exist independently of any government. The Constitution does not grant rights; it doesn't even promise to protect them. It just says that the Federal government promises not to violate certain rights enumerated in the Constitution. Whether or not they've kept that promise is a different issue.

So, in the absence of laws against murder, it's alright to murder someone just because you want to?

"Inherent" doesn't mean you have protection against being murdered. It's an abstract concept, not a description of something tangible or functional. Unfortunately, many people cannot grasp theory and separate it from what they see in the physical world. Abstract concepts do not necessarily align completely with actual practice. "Inherent" is an assumption about the nature of a thing. It has very little practic

Well, it's reasonable in that these guys work day in and day out to protect the nation against the boogie man... err... terrorist ({BOO}). Day in and day out, they're searching the same bags, with the same crap in them. Seizing 5 oz of lip balm, and half empty drink bottles. Once in a great while they get someone who forgot they were carrying a weapon, or forgot to move it to their checked luggage.

Then the day comes! A terrorist has picked *THEIR* airport! Finally a bad guy to fight against. The public will be safe. They'll be on the front of every newspaper in the country saying "This TSA agent saved hundreds!" The whole reason they've been doing this job, to defend their nation against the terrorist threat!

Unfortunately, it turns out to be some little homemade toy, that had absolutely no dangerous qualities. Well, unless you count sending angry text messages after their phone is charged. They may twitter "TSA Sux! They broke my toyz"

One again, the nation is safe from the boogie man... err.. terrorists.

I don't think the item they took from the Grad student was an mp3 player. I think it was some other sort of electronic doodad- although the summary makes it confusing by posting past examples of the evils of the mintyboost. I do rather wonder what the Doctoral student thought about his work being destroyed in the name of security- it'll probably make for an interesting chapter in his thesis.

And upon further reading of the article, it looks like they didn't destroy the science fair project at all. It was a completely different situation, where somebody had a minty mp3 player (or similar) in an unattended bag at the airport, and the TSA took no chances. This summary confused me several times....

Honestly? As someone who has seen real improvised explosive devices? It kinda looks like one. It also looks like any of about a million other possible home electronics kits stuck into a mint tin, but a bomb is definitely one possibility. Important point to remember here is that many of the people that make this sort of thing aren't terribly good at it. Especially if they just plan to make and use the one. Small devices like this are a lot less common than they used to be in the major theaters (Iraq and Afghanistan) these days from what I understand, but we were trained to look for stuff just like this (common household goods with suspicious wiring/electronics) and found a few that would have taken off a hand or leg, or disabled a wheeled vehicle.

Thankfully most of the cheap homemade jobs don't actually explode, but a few do. I can see caution at least. Seems like they could just get him to turn in on in an isolated spot though. Couldn't be enough explosives in that to hurt anyone more than a few feet away.

You know, all the device needs to do is LOOK like how a dangerous device might look like to an untrained individual. Then the person would wave it around and threaten things. Also, why does it need to be looking like an improvised explosive device? it could be looking like an improvised GPS/Radar/Radio/Cockpit jammer.

Rule #1 in first year engineering courses should be "Don't take your prototype on an airplane"

"as someone who has seen real improvised explosive devices? It kinda looks like one."Fair enough. I understand why a couple boxes with wires and odd looking kludged together electronics can look like a bomb under xray.Here's what I have a problem with: These people said "This looks like a bomb". They then proceeded to take this object out of the suitcase, open parts of the device, arrange it on the table, put a paper ruler under the device, and take a picture of it, before conducting any render-safe oper

In other words, exactly what you think is supposed to happen, happened. The screeners called the bomb squad and got everyone else out of the way. After the bomb squad cleared the device, they took photographs. Presumably they did so because they want to be able to communicate to their colleagues what happened in this relatively unusual incident, and hopefully they want to learn from it.

On the other hand, if they realized that this was not an explosive device then they should not have blown the thing up. They either handled a potential IED in a remarkably unsafe manner or they knowingly detonated a safe object. Either way, the TSA has proven their incompetence.

The blown-up Altoids tin shown in the other linked blog was from a case where a bag was left unattended with the device inside. In that case, the bomb squad couldn't determine with complete confidence that the device seen on the x-ray was harmless, so they blew it up as a precaution. In that case, no one fiddled with the object in order to take pictures before the detonation.

While I'm no fan of the TSA, they don't deserve the particular and specific scorn you're heaping on them based on your reading of the sloppy Slashdot summary (and your failure to read the linked articles).

Yeah, the real problem here is that the governmet has decided to take reasoning that makes perfect sense in a war zone and apply it to our communities.

At places where IEDs are a common and real threat to soldiers, it makes sense to treat any jury-rigged wiring as a potential IED. In a country that has millions of people flying every year without a single actual incident of a bomb, it doesn't.

Same with all the no-knock raids that end up killing innocent people. It is perfectly reasonable for the resident to have a gun in hand when responding to someone busting into his house at night. It is also perfectly reasonable for a cop to defend himself. The problem is the idiots in the police department that think it is a good idea have our cops act like soldiers in a war-zone, just to enforce laws which aren't a life-and-death matter.

Ignoring the lack of a #4, #1 is not always present, and #2 may be confused with #3.

Here's the reality: You fucking sue the TSA if they ever do this to your possessions. The TSA should be experts on bombs, and it should be their job to be professionals at identifying bombs. The fact that they can't only proves their negligence.

You don't get to decide whether something is or isn't dangerous when you haven't got a 12-year old's knowledge of electronics.

The TSA should be experts on bombs, and it should be their job to be professionals at identifying bombs.

Sure, I agree, but as long as we're talking about "reality", it won't happen until we decide we want to pay what it would cost to staff the TSA checkpoints that way.

You don't get to decide whether something is or isn't dangerous when you haven't got a 12-year old's knowledge of electronics.

Which is exactly what happened here. The TSA staff didn't decide anything. They *presumed* it was dangerous, and called in somebody who had the training that in an ideal, non-financially-constrained world they'd have right there at the gate.

That's what everybody ends up doing with expensive technical expertise. The person you call up on the support line for software ought to be an expert in that software, and ideally very knowledgeable about the systems that software interacts with. But it won't happen until we choose to favor companies that give us good service over those who give us lousy service at the lowest possible price.

Geeks with Altoid can electronics projects aren't a use-case that was considered in the system design. So what? Is that really such a surprise? What should be surprising is that people bright enough to design and build circuits can't figure out that it'd be simpler and less hassle to put their tiny mint-tin projects in a FedEx envelope and ship them rather than running it through the carry-on security checkpoint. I'm not saying there's anything wrong about sort of forgetting how clueless mundane folk are; it's an easy mistake to make. But it's just silly to bellyache like it's something that *somebody else should fix for us*. Nobody is going to fix anything for us, until we persuade them to.

Of course if you think you can convince our fellow citizens to pay what it would take to people who can be trained as experts in bomb identification and then follow through on that training, I'll cheer you on. But until you manage that I'm shipping my homebrew junk rather than carrying it on. And I'm not planning on holding my breath until you succeed.

I don't expect experts but have some common sense. Reality is that something the size of an altoids tin won't take down a plane.

Really? That's common sense? How could it be common sense unless the minimum size device needed to take down a plane was something everyone would know from day to day experience?

Do you know what that minimum size is? Is it even possible to set a minimum boundary? As a data point, consider that Pan Am 103 was brought down by a mere 250 g of plastic explosive -- a small enough amount that it was disguised in the chassis of a portable tape player and stowed in a checked bag. There may possibly be more powe

Cleric: And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.

The "Minty Fresh" mp3 player wasn't just examined, or even pried open to see what was inside. It was maliciously torn to shreds. What do those Luddite TSA agents think could be hiding in a millimeter thick sheet of Aluminum lid? It looks like they put it into a blender.

This isn't looking out for "Public Safety", this is intimidation just because they can. Light your next bonfire with a copy of the Constitution. At least the paper it's written on can be used for something, even if the words are worthless.

Based on the comments, Nico & I felt a clarification was needed. This post purposely never mentioned a passenger because the bag was left unattended and there was no passenger available to interview. We're not implying that you cannot travel with these types of items, we're just pointing out that they could be of concern, or possibly even hold you up a little bit. Listen, we think these things are cool too, but this is just a friendly "heads up" and not a threat.

Don't forget they shut down the entire terminal in their massive overreaction, which has become the norm lately.

I honestly don't know if the massive overreaction law enforcement tends to have over any issue lately is because they are completely stupid or because they want to get media attention in some ridiculous effort to show they are keeping us safe. I wish it were the later, but I fear it is rampant stupidity.

It's probably a mix of option 2 and unnamed option 3. They want to get media attention so that they can get the public opinion on their side so that they can get more funding. More funding means more pork for security companies.

Unnamed option 3 is that they would get sued to the stone age if a bomb really went off and people found out that they knew about it and did nothing. It's a "backside save manoeuvre" on their part.

Why bother voting Palin? You know there's a Democrat in the white house RIGHT THIS SECOND right? And the Democrats have had control of house, senate, and white house within the last few years, and they most certainly didn't finally fight this TSA nonsense- in fact, in the 80s, they were in favor of something like this.

Can't blame Bush anymore. Guess you'll have to accept that they are all corrupt control freaks, eh? Both major parties are opposed to freedom, privacy, and any amount of self determination. I understand that once you pick Red or Blue you want to assign all the Bad Things to the Other Color, but it's just not that simple.

Your Palin comment, while designed to be funny, isn't. Have you even seen what she thinks of the TSA and all that or you just assuming? In the end, all you've done is proved you're even more shallow than she is.

She believes all of THESE kinds of examples are nothing more than Politically Correct Security. The problem is that the LEFT WING handcuffs how we do things because it might "offend" the terrorists ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Muslims and incite them to commit acts of terrorism. So we pat down Granny's Diaper, confiscate Insulin, Fondle little kids and least... smash a toy MP3 player.

That's baloney. The American Muslim community supplies tips to the FBI leading to terrorism arrests, up to half of the recent US cases. Secondly, the latest cases of airline terrorism weren't done by Muslims; remember Andrew Joseph Stack? Thirdly, Israeli security knows how futile it is to profile only Muslims, when a pregnant Irish woman named Ann Murphy was caught trying to smuggle a bomb into Israel (her Jordanian boyfriend put her up to it). You HAVE to search everyone or else terrorists will know preci

Even if the device is harmless, it doesn't mean they don't truly need to give it a few extra *really* careful looks.This is not a troll. I had something similar happen to me, but don't feel a burning desire to recount it play-by-play or have the FBI file re-opened.(Yes, really)I will just say that it was a perfect storm of fluke events and the fact I was carrying a home-built electronics project in my *checked* luggage that caused their BAO to take extreme interest in my bag, and myself.At some point, those

Ignorance truly is bliss. Show them something they don't understand and hope you have a good lawyer. Encase it in a plastic box and you're fine.

You comment on how we're probably smarter than most TSA employees is troubling. I would be more comfortable (and I'm sure the screening process would be better) if they were smarter and if they were allowed to think on the job instead of being a mindless drone following the rules. Chances of the average IQ going up amongst TSA employees seem exceptionally dim in lig

I'm more interested in this fair. I've never heard of a science fair for graduate students. And what exactly did his device do? The sources all seem to just say it has a purpose and looks scary. If I were this kid I'd be more insulted than anything, that my project looks so shoddy it appears to be something an uneducated terrorist might make.

Geeze, talk about incompetent reporting. No, graduate students don't compete their research in "science fairs". It was a CONFERENCE. Specifically, a physics education conference: the 2011 American Association of Physics Teachers Summer Meeting [aapt.org] at Creighton University.

A train is an excellent alternative! Sure it might take a little longer and cost a little more (sometimes it's actually cheaper), but it is incredibly comfortable and convenient. Most trains have a dining car, a little car with movie, and a viewing car with large glass windows so you can sit and watch the country go by. The seats are large and there's tons of leg room. Most trains have outlets now so no need to worry about the laptop dying. Some even have wifi! Oh, bags come on for free (there's a limit to

As far as I’m concerned, all of this airport security – the cameras, the questions, the screening, the searches, is just one more way of reducing your liberty and reminding you they can fuck with you anytime they want, as long as you’re willing to put up with it. Which means, of course, anytime they want. Because that’s the way Americans are now. They’re always willing to trade away a little of their freedom for the feeling – the illusion – of security.

So it seems that TSA Bob is suggesting that separating pieces of your custom electronics may help your luggage get through TSA screening. Since this device was found in carry-on baggage I don't know how much that would help. I often travel with custom and semi-custom electronics in my checked baggage and I've never had a problem (although I regularly find the "searched by TSA" card when I reach my destination). A couple things I do:-Put custom electronics in my checked baggage whenever possible-Put the parts in separate containers whenever possible-Separate batteries, antennas, and other accessories from the devices-Try not to travel to Phoenix (nothing to do with custom electronics or TSA, I've had two bags seriously damaged at PHX)

Also, be aware that "rubber-ducky" type antennas show up as a thin metal blade/wire on x-ray. I've had my carry-on's searched a couple times because I forgot to put an antenna in my checked baggage, although it's never been a problem once I took it out of the bag and showed it to the agent.

Yup. I recently learned that ordinary 9V batteries are an issue. Normally I will leave consumer electronics assembled. But recently we were pulled aside because the 9V battery in the metronome in my 12yo daughter's violin case looked suspicious. The violin, on the X-Ray machine, looks unmistakeably like a violin. We've never had an issue with it. But somehow the 9 volt battery looks opaque and chunky enough that they dug things apart until they found it. So... I've added 9V batteries to the list of t

I travel with hand made electronic boards in my carry-on luggage on virtually every flight I've taken since 2006 (as part of my job), and I fly about 2-4 times/month. The only time my bag has been searched (triggered by the x-ray scan) was when I was travelling with a isolation transformer (about a pound of steel and copper). If what Blogger Bob is talking about was commonplace, I'm sure I'd at least have gotten my bags hand-screened a few more times.

Why not ask the guy what it is. Let him explain why it is there, what it does. Maybe bring in someone with some engineering experience.

If the guy is a suicide bomber, you are already dead. If he isn't, then you have every reason to listen to him. If you can't find any place for explosives to be hiding, then it isn't dangerous.

Wires alone are poor indicators that you have a bomb. Thousands of times of devices have wires and are not bombs than devices with wires that are bombs. Maybe even millions of times as many devices as a TSA agent is going to encounter.

Bombs can be made to look totally innocent. Even if you open them and look at them.

The Intelligent thing to do is to do a bit of training as to what might really be a bomb, and who might really be a bomber, and how to call in someone to evaluate a situation quickly before thousands and thousands of dollars are spent and people's lives are disrupted by something that can be safely evaluated quickly by someone with training.

It isn't just do-it-yourself gear that can arouse suspicion. My Zoom H4N digital recorder has elicited attention from the TSA. The two built-in mikes at the front apparently make it look a lot like a Taser on the scanner.

"No real bomber would be so obvious" is self-refuting. As soon as you decide not to suspect devices because they are too obvious, they become "not too obvious" because they are now the perfect thing for a bomber to use to avoid suspicion.

It's also true that1) many bombers are stupid and *will* make bombs that are fairly obvious, and2) bombing is a high-stress occupation and high stress leads bombers to act in stupid ways anyway.

No, they blew it up in a controlled detonation. Most of the time that's the safest way to handle small bombs (or suspected bombs). If you disarm it you run the risk of it blowing unexpected and hurting the tech. They probably never even opened it. If they really thought it could be a bomb, that would be dangerous.

"Thankfully because she followed our instructions, she ended up in our cell instead of a morgue," Pare said. "Again, this is a serious offense... Iâ(TM)m shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to an airport."

I think they have it backwards...

I'm shocked and appalled that wearing such a device to an airport has a chance of winding you up in the morgue!

Airplanes are private property. If you don't like what they do, don't set foot on their property.

Airports that deal with commercial travel, are public property. Those public airports may be owned by the state or other municipalities, and make up the largest percentage of airports. These public airports are where the constitutional rights are being surrendered by US citizens to US government officials, whom the citizens are supposed to be expressly protected from in their constitutionally granted rights. There are privatized airports and chartered commercial flights, that is not what we're talking a

except that this actually isn't security theater. It's the useful kind of security procedure that actually prevents bad stuff happening. Screening of cargo and investigation of suspicious looking bits of cargo is how they stopped the printer-cartridge-bomb plot, for instance.

It's all very well to knee-jerk off about how the TSA is full of idiots and they're trampling over your inalienable rights and freedoms and blah fucking blah, but at least spend a few minutes thinking about the context. This science project was a fairly simple, hand-built electronic device with improvised casing whose purpose isn't immediately determinable. The TSA says, and I'm happy to defer to their superior experience on this specific point, that bomb detonators they catch often look like - in fact, are - fairly simple, hand-built electronic devices with hand-built cases whose purpose isn't immediately discernible. Are you seriously suggesting it's 'security theater' to screen airplane cargo and take a closer look at improvised electronic devices? Really? If so, I'm damn well not flying on _your_ airline.

It's not like they arrested the kid and hauled him off to Guantanamo Bay or something. They found a suspicious device and performed an exhaustive investigation to figure out what it was. Which came to the right conclusion. I don't really see that anything happened wrong here.

except that this actually isn't security theater. It's the useful kind of security procedure that actually prevents bad stuff happening. Screening of cargo and investigation of suspicious looking bits of cargo is how they stopped the printer-cartridge-bomb plot, for instance.

Umm.. no, they stopped the printer cartridge bomb plot because they got a tip off from prince Mohammed bin Nayef. Security checkpoints failed to detect the bombs. It sounds like torturing prisoners in gitmo did, though.Since you don't seem to know what you're talking about you can go read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_planes_bomb_plot [wikipedia.org]

Up until the point where they shut down half the airport, I'd have agreed. This is the sort of situation where you could ask the person to describe the contents of his/her luggage, then open the luggage, inspect the contents to verify that the story was plausible, and you're done.

If you don't have people smart enough to figure out how to verify the safety of the device, th

At the check-in desk, your luggage is scanned immediately in a purpose-built area. Sela plays devil's advocate - what if you have escaped the attention of the first four layers of security, and now try to pass a bag with a bomb in it?

"I once put this question to Jacques Duchesneau (the former head of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority): say there is a bag with play-doh in it and two pens stuck in the play-doh. That is 'Bombs 101' to a screener. I asked Ducheneau, 'What would you do?' And he said, 'Evacuate the terminal.' And I said, 'Oh. My. God.'

A screener at Ben-Gurion has a pair of better options.

First, the screening area is surrounded by contoured, blast-proof glass that can contain the detonation of up to 100 kilos of plastic explosive. Only the few dozen people within the screening area need be removed, and only to a point a few metres away.

Second, all the screening areas contain 'bomb boxes'. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation.

"This is a very small simple example of how we can simply stop a problem that would cripple one of your airports," Sela said.